October 1, 2008

Pakistani clerics issue a fatwa against President Asif Ali Zardari for complimenting Sarah Palin. (He said: "Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.")

And the feminists are pissed too. "As a Pakistani and as a woman, it was shameful and unacceptable. He was looking upon her merely as a woman and not as a politician in her own right.... He should show some decorum... he should behave like a mourning widower...."

Are they the feminists who aren't allowed to drive or attend university? The feminists who may not leave their dwellings unless escorted by a male? Those feminists?

So because they are denied their rights by the government, they can't be called feminists? I'm sorry, but that makes no sense at all. I'm more inclined to respect their feminist credentials because for them it's about fighting for their rights, rights women here in the U.S. take for granted.

Ann Althouse, trying to teach her wingnut audience about the reality of sexism.

I guess there is one small advantage to the garden of lunatics you're cultivating here in your little community, Ann: you can appeal to their natural Republican feelings of victimization and get them to embrace notions of feminism which they've rejected all their lives.

Who even 2 months ago could have imagined ultraconservatives complaining about gender bias and celebrating teenage pregnancy.

I guess you're proving every day that even conservatives can mature. Slowly, and in very narrow terms, but hey, if you can teach a severely autistic or retarded person to keep a job at Kmart, you can teach a wingnut to find more nuanced expression for his inner feelings of victimhood.

In any event, wen did respecting a woman and noting her attractiveness become mutually opposed propositions, and what does it say about the view of marriage held by such people? You presumably think your spouse is attractive - that mean you don't respect them?

I've not called Palin a bimbo, but I see no basis to respect her as a VP candidate. Did Althouse catch Couric's queston to her about other Supreme Court cases she disagrees with? She didn't know a goddamn thing.

Skepticism about Sarah Palin has soared since she entered the national political stage, with six in 10 Americans now doubting her qualifications for office and fewer than half convinced of her grasp of complex issues.

Palin now looks more like a drag than a boost to the GOP ticket:

Thirty-two percent of registered voters say her selection makes them less likely to support John McCain for president, up from 19 percent last month.

Her basic ratings are weaker still.

Just 35 percent say Palin has the experience it takes to serve effectively as president, down a dozen points since early September.

60 percent think not, up 15. And just 46 percent think Palin "understands complex issues," while 49 percent think she doesn't -- a poor assessment on this most basic qualification.

Biden's ratings starkly contrast Palin's: Seventy-five percent say he understands complex issues, 70 percent say he has suitable experience to take over as president if necessary and just 13 percent say his selection makes them less apt to support Barack Obama.

I don't know if pointing out hypocrisy is the same thing as complaining about gender bias. Apparently the Democrats think women are too stupid to realize you can throw a group of people some legislative baubles without actually respecting them. Who knows? Maybe they're right.

Also, there is a big difference between "celebrating" and "accepting" the fact people will make mistakes.

Michael has his prejudices about conservatives: reality has very little to do with his world. The same goes for Loafing Oaf and the other Palin-haters.

That's what happens when you're blogging from your mother's basement. It takes actually getting out into the real world to understand that conservatives are not now, nor have they ever been, anything like the misogynistic, race-baiting, hate-filled people that Michael, Alpha and their ideological compatriots have revealed themselves to be ever since Palin's nomination.

Their criticisms of Palin are never of her ideology: they're personal. They want to try to destroy her personally like their Dear Leader instructed them to.

Just look to their posts in this thread alone: they repeat lies that have long since been disproven, they attack her personally, her family...but never a word about the policies.

Axelrod knows he can't win on the issues, so he sends out his flunkies like Michael and his friends to engage in the "politics of personal destruction" instead.

Who knows, maybe enough of America is ignorant enough to fall for this kind of garbage and Obama actually has a shot at winning...but it doesn't mean that they're actually fooling anyone here, or that anything they say deserves serious consideration.

LoafingOaf said...I've not called Palin a bimbo, but I see no basis to respect her as a VP candidate. Did Althouse catch Couric's queston to her about other Supreme Court cases she disagrees with? She didn't know a goddamn thing.

I don't know why Sarah is having so many problems in these interviews.

Pakistani feminists - I can't believe anyone, anywhere actually put that in print! Last I heard, there really were 16 of them in all of Pakistan, the others that could have been were married off at age 12 and must now stay at home pregnant.

"When arrested the first time in 1990, after Bhutto was first dismissed as prime minister, Zardari was accused of tying a remote-controlled bomb to the leg of a U.K.-based Pakistani businessman, Murtaza Bukhari, and sending him into a bank to withdraw money from his account for a payoff he had been avoiding. In 1993, when Bhutto regained power, Zardari was plucked out of prison to be made the minister in charge of government investments (i.e., contracts).

No sooner was Bhutto deposed the second time than Zardari was charged with the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, his wife's influential brother, who was expected to play the role of PPP leader. After the execution of their father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by military dictator President Zia ul-Haq in 1979, Murtaza Bhutto fled to communist-controlled Afghanistan. From there and later in Middle Eastern capitals, Murtaza Bhutto mounted an insurgency against Pakistan's military regime, then won elections from exile in 1993, became a provincial legislator, came home -- only to be shot dead.

Benazir's other brother, Shahnawaz, was also politically active -- and was found dead of poisoning in his French Riviera apartment in 1985."

Pakistan has 42 nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that can be launched within 7 to 10 minutes and can fly as far as 3,000 kilometers. It has other nuclear bombs which it can deliver using F-16s. Pakistan also operates a fleet of French-made submarines that can launch ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

Pakistan does not abide by the no-first-use doctrine of use of nuclear weapons.

Michael said..."Skepticism about Sarah Palin has soared since she entered the national political stage, with six in 10 Americans now doubting her qualifications for office and fewer than half convinced of her grasp of complex issues."

The good thing about polls is they allow a large number of people the opportunity to shop at Wal-Mart intead of voting, once the jingoism they subscribe to puts their Esteemed One in such comfortable lead....clutch and hug them Chinese T-shirts, baby, clutch and hug! You're smokin' that bitch and lump jawed man by a spread of 10!!

Still, given recent poll numbers, one is rather left to wonder what on Earth is going on in America's heads. They cannot be seriously entertaining the prospect of electing Obama, surely.

Well if he does win, his success was brought on by an unpopular war, an even more unpopular President who has failed about every leadership test thrown at him since 9/11 which all the more emphasized by the near complete abandonment by his own party on a bill he demanded be passed. Toss in the near collapse of the economy and you have what is called a perfect storm.

In fairness with the last 8 years, I think a lot of people have a hard time imagining Obama would be worse. Personally I think an Obama presidency will simply usher in a new era of financial disaster if he actually gets his spending bills passed but perhaps a wake up call is in order.

So a hard-line mosque with some radical feminist members complain about Zardari getting a little flirty with Palin? Not much different than smarmy Chirac doing the perp walk up Bush's arm a few years ago.

Get a sense of humor and a life to these zealots who take themselves way to seriously. These radical Islamists in Pakistan would much rather Zardari treat western women, and Pakistani women who try to act like western women, as whores and prostitutes.

Zardari's marriage to Bhutto was arranged so his frame of reference is different just as his culture is different. What really bothers these women is Palin's ability to inspire in others that which they fail to inspire in themselves.

"Lawyers and businessmen have talked about moving away, particularly to Dubai or Malaysia. Foreign investment had almost dried up before the attack, they said, and now some worried it would disappear altogether. Some of Pakistan’s biggest businessmen had already shipped capital abroad, crimping new business ventures.

Just another example of how liberals and jihadis are on the same side of the spectrum. And they have the same goals - the destruction of the west and the imposition of sharia. Vote for the crypto-muslim and make their wet dreams come true.